Technologies — which are generally considered as non-ideological props in our lives — are designed objects, built with a populated world in mind. Behind their shiny machinery are designers with histories, blinders, and agendas.
Even the simplest team task tool is contrived around a social schema of how businesses are structured, people interact, and what is more or less important.
Tools have opinions. Tools have biases.
And just as with people, being aware of a bias doesn’t counter it. Although gaining that awareness is a necessary first step to sidestepping bias.
Our necessary next step is to realize tools are biased, not impartial or objective, and to select or build tools that push us to where we want to go, and away from what we want to leave behind.

The official story is that today’s workplace is designed to increase the likelihood of serendipity, creativity, innovation, and human happiness, but the hard reality is that most companies are decreasing the square footage of offices to save money, even when evidence suggests that many people are less happy, and less productive in open spaces, especially introverts.

Culture is not an object to be designed and built, despite contemporary efforts to the contrary. Culture is the outgrowth of the independent interactions and decisions of those living within the culture, while efforts to ‘build stronger culture’ in business is a form of coercion or propaganda, intended to impose or justify selected norms.
Work culture is bottom up, while company cultures are top-down. As a result work culture is persistent, while company culture falls apart without constant monitoring and manipulation.
Work culture is rooted outside any specific company, and represents the shared beliefs and common principles of the community of working people at large, and people bring work culture with them as them move from company to company.

One issue is that different teams use different messaging services. Lyft’s product and engineering teams use Slack, while some in the legal and HR teams use Google Hangouts, said an employee. Mr. Morelli, echoing efforts by Lyft’s “internal communications team,” urged more people to use “Facebook for Work.” That way more workers could get on the same page on company-wide matters, he suggested.